Pornography

 

 

Question :

What is Pornography? And why does it have so much Appeal?

 

 

Pornography is a by-product of religious repression. The whole credit goes to the priests. Pornography has nothing to do with pornographers. The pornography is created, managed by the Church, by the religious people. In a primitive, natural state, man is not pornographic. When human beings are naked and nude and man knows the woman's body and woman knows the man's body, you cannot sell PLAYBOY. It is impossible. Who will purchase PLAYBOY? And who will look into all that crap?

 

They have repressed so much that man's mind is fascinated of pornography. The whole credit goes to them. They have repressed so much that man's mind is boiling. The man wants to see the woman's body. Nothing wrong in it, a simple desire, a human desire. And the woman wants to know the man's body. A simple desire, nothing wrong about it. Just think of a world where trees are covered with clothes.

 

There are people ... I have heard about some English ladies who cover their dogs and cats with clothes. Just think, cows and horses and dogs dressed. Then you will find new pornography arising. Somebody will publish a NUDE picture of a tree -- and you will hide it in a Bible and look at it! This whole foolishness is out of religious repression.

 

Make man free, allow people to be nude. I am not saying they should continuously be nude, but nudity should be accepted. On the beach, at the swimming pool, in the home ... nudity should be accepted. The children should take a bath with the mother, with the father, in the bathroom. There is no need for the father to lock the bathroom when he goes in. The children can come and have a talk and chitchat and go out. Pornography will disappear.

 

Each child wants to know. "How does my daddy look?" Each child wants to know, "How does my mother look?" And this is simply intelligence, curiosity. And the child cannot know what the mother looks like, and the child cannot know what the father looks like; now you are creating illness in the child's mind. It is YOU, that YOU are ill, and the illness will be reflected in the child's mind. I am not saying sit nude in the office or in the factory. If it is hot, it is okay, but there is no need to be naked, it should not be an obsession; but this continuous obsession of hiding your body is just ugly.

 

And one thing more. Because of the clothes, bodies HAVE become ugly, because then you don't care. You care only about the face. If your belly goes on becoming bigger and bigger, who bothers? You can hide it. Your body has become ugly because it is not exposed; otherwise you will think a little: the belly is getting too big. Just let one hundred people stand nude, and they all will be ashamed, and they will squirm and they will start hiding themselves. Something is wrong. Why is it so? They know only about their face. The face they take care of; the whole body is neglected. This is bad. This is not good. It is not in favor of the body, either.

 

Any country where people are allowed a little freedom to be nude becomes more beautiful;people have more beautiful bodies. If American women are getting more beautiful and have more beautiful bodies there is no wonder in it. Indian woman will have to wait long; they can hide their ugly bodies in the saries very carefully. The sari is a great help.

 

Nudity should be natural, should be as natural as animals, as trees, as everything else is nude. Then pornography will disappear. Pornography is there as a sort of mental masturbation; it is mind masturbation. You are not allowed to love women, you are not allowed to love men, you are not allowed to make as many contacts as possible; the mind is boiling and starts a sort of inner masturbation. Pornography helps you; it gives you visions of beautiful women and beautiful men, to dream about, and it gives you a thrill.

 

Your alive wife does not give you any thrill. With your alive wife you suddenly go dead. There are people, even while making love to their wife, they are imagining some other woman; they are imagining some PLAYBOY picture. They can make love to their woman only when in their imagination there is some other woman, some fantasy. Then they get thrilled. They are not making love to their woman, and the woman is not making love to them. She may be thinking of some actor or some hero or somebody. There are four people in each bed! Of course, it is too crowded, and you never contact the real person; those imaginary ones are standing in between.

 

You should know that masturbation -- mental or physical is a perversion. It does not exist in nature. Homosexuality does not exist in nature, but in zoos it comes into existence. In zoos animals start masturbating. In zoos animals even start becoming homosexually interested. Wherever the situation is unnatural, unnatural perversions enter. In the military, in the army, people become homosexual, because it is an "all-boys" club, no woman available. Their pent-up energies start making them insane; they think they will go mad if they don't allow some outlet.

 

In the boys' hostels, in the girls' hostels, where no boy can come, no girl can come, the other sex is not allowed, naturally pornography will be greatly enjoyed. It will help masturbation. But these things have not been talked of directly. Now many will be offended -- why am I talking about these things? I am here to make everything clear to you so that you can become more and more natural. The appeal for pornography simply says that your mind is in an abnormal state. It is perfectly good to be interested in a beautiful woman, nothing wrong, but to have a picture of a nude woman and to get excited about it is just stupid. That's what people are doing with pornography.

 

I have heard a beautiful joke. Listen attentively, don't miss it.

 

A husband was suspicious of his wife, so he hired a private detective to find out whether she had a lover or not. The detective, a Chinese immigrant, came back to report after only two days. His arm and nose were broken and his head was tied up in bandages. "What happened?" the husband inquired eagerly. "Any proof yet?"

 

"Well," the detective answered, "I hid outside your house when you left in the morning. After half an hour a man came and let himself in with a key. I climbed a tree to see into the bedroom, and there was he holding she and she kissing he. So he play with she and she play with he; I play with me and I fall down from the tree."

 

That's what pornography is. Beware of all sorts of perversions. To love is good; to dream about it is ugly. Why? When the real is available, why go for the unreal? Even the real never satisfies! So how can the unreal satisfy? Even the real, in the final analysis, proves to be illusory, so what to say about the illusory? Let me repeat: Even the real, one day, proves to be just unreal, so what to say about the unreal?

 

Go into the real love, and you will become so aware one day that even the real love, the so-called real love, will disappear. And when a man is completely beyond sexuality ... Not that I am saying "TRY to go beyond," no, not at all, God forbid. What I mean when I say when a man "goes beyond" is that when a man has gone deeper into sex, into love, and has known and has found that there is nothing, that very finding takes him above. He starts floating above the earth, he grows wings. That transcendence is BRAHMACHARYA, that transcendence is celibacy. It has nothing to do with your effort; it has nothing to do with repression.

 

A repressed person can never attain BRAHMACHARYA; he will become pornographic. And there are a thousand and one ways of being pornographic. In the old Indian scriptures there are descriptions of great RISHIS sitting in meditation and beautiful women trying to seduce them, dancing around them, naked. And the stories say they are sent by the God of heaven to corrupt them because the God in heaven is afraid if they attain to their SAMADHI they will become competitors. The God of heaven is afraid of their competition, so when they are attaining closer and closer, coming closer to SAMADHI, he sends beautiful women to seduce them.

 

Now, there is no God, and no beautiful women come from heaven; this is mind pornography.

 

These RISHIS, these so-called seers, have repressed sex so much that at the last moment, when they are really getting closer to their innermost center, that repressed sex bursts forth, explodes. And in that explosion their own images, mind images ... It is a mind panorama, it is very colorful, and it is so colorful and looks so real that even they are deceived; they think really women are there. Just go in a cave for three months and be celibate and force celibacy.

 

After three months you will be a great seer -- and you will start seeing things. That is what a great seer is. You will start seeing damsels and beautiful APSARAS from heaven coming and dancing around you seducing you. They are just your mind picture. When you are deprived of reality, your dreams start almost looking like reality. That's what we call hallucination.

 

In those old days PLAYBOY magazine was not available, so the RISHIMUNIS had to depend on their own. Now you can have some support from the outside. But beware: even the real is proved, finally, to be unreal. So don't move into the realms of the unreal. Go into the real, let it be a great experience. I am not against it, I am all for it, go into it, because only by going into it, one day, BRAHMACHARYA, one day, you simply get out of it. Not that love will disappear. In fact, for the first time love will appear, but a totally different kind of love. Buddha calls it compassion -- a cool love, with no sexual heat in it.

 

Your being will become a benediction. Your very presence will make people feel your love. Your love will fall and shower on them. In your very presence, people will start moving into the unknown. Yes, great compassion will arise in you. It is the same sexual energy, released from the sexual objects. Not repressed. Released. Not forcibly repressed, but understandably released. The same sexual energy becomes love, compassion.

 

And when love, compassion, arises you are fulfilled. Buddha has said two things are the goals: awareness and compassion. And both come out of the sex energy; both are born out of it. Those two are the flowers, ultimate flowers, of sex energy. That lotus is waiting in you to flower. Don't waste your energies. Use your energies to understand them, go into them deeply, meditatively, so that one day that lotus opens. Chapter 8 - The Profound and the Trivial

 

-Osho, "The First Principle, #8"